7/29/2017 - Helen Raleigh Townhall.com
Close to 70% of our
annual immigration visa quota is allocated to family-based immigrants. How did
this happen?
The 1952 Immigration
Act established a preference system to prioritize immigration applications for
the first time in our nation's history. It gave first preference to applicants
who had family already residing in the U.S. By the early 1960s, the call for
immigration reform had gained wide support from the rebellious social culture
as well as the success of the Civil Rights movement. After JFK’s assassination,
the U.S. Congress took up the call for immigration reform by passing the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which is also known as the Hart–Celler
Act—named after its two key sponsors, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan and
Representative Emanuel Celler of New York. Senator Ted Kennedy also played a
very important role. Without his support, this bill wouldn’t have passed.
The 1965 Act abolished
the National Origins Formula that had been in place since 1921, and which had
restricted immigration on the basis of proportion to the existing U.S.
population. The Act kept the preference system introduced in the Immigration
Act of 1952, which gave preference to family-reunion for relatives of U.S.
citizens and permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), followed by
employment-based immigrants, and refugees.
By the late 1960s, the
influx of new immigrants from Europe had slowed down due to the post-war
economic boom in Europe. Many Americans with European ancestry had already been
in the U.S. for several generations by then, so there wasn’t a great need for
family-reunion-based immigration. However, that was not the case for many
people from Asia and Latin America. Until 1965, immigration from these regions
had been restricted for more than a century. By removing the national origin
quota system, the new immigration law opened the door for immigrants from these
regions for the first time. Many immigrants took advantage of the
family-reunion preference and sponsored their families to become legal
immigrants in the United States.
Our immigration laws
haven't changed much since the Immigration Act of 1965, which has had a
profound impact on our nation’s demographics, culture, and politics. We
continues to use the preference system set by the 1965 Act today, with
family-based immigration utilizing 70% of the annual visa quota and
employment-based immigrants using another 20%. In 1965, the U.S. population was
194 million, with 6% of its population, or a little less than 10 million
people, as foreign-born immigrants. The Pew Research Center estimates that if
we factor in the second- and third-generation offspring of immigrants, the
post-1965 immigration wave has added 72 million people to the U.S. population,
which is a little more than the population of France (67 million).
The overly emphasis on
family reunion based immigration is problematic on three fronts. First, it’s
unfair. It gives preference to blood relationships and family connections and
discriminates against people who don’t have family connections, but do have
knowledge, skills, and experiences and can contribute to our economy and be a
productive citizen. The people our immigration system discriminates against
today are the kind of people our nation has attracted since its founding. The
current system also overlooks the fact that many people waiting in line for
family reunion might qualify to migrate to America based on their merit but are
instead stuck in the decade-long wait to be admitted on a family basis.
Second, this approach
doesn’t serve our nation’s economic needs because (a) the quota for family
reunion is not set based on labor-market demand; and (b) the visa preference
hierarchy favors the old (parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents) and
the young (children younger than 21 years of age) but discriminates against the
most likely productive ones (people 21 years old or older, and siblings of U.S.
citizens and permanent residents). The current system gives preference to
people who are more likely to become financial dependents rather than economic
contributors. Empirical evidence shows that after we started admitting
immigrants mainly on a family reunification basis in 1965, we opened up the
welfare system to immigrants.
Third, the emphasis on
family reunion results in chain immigration, which exacerbates the long wait
and backlog. Every legal resident or U.S. citizen can not only sponsor his or
her nuclear relatives such as spouses and children, but also non-nuclear
relatives such as parents, adult children, and siblings. The more family-based
visas we hand out, the higher the demand will be, because everyone has some
family members he or she wants to bring over, and those family members have
their own family members, and so on.
Chain immigration is
the main driver behind the immigration population growth since the Immigration
Act of 1965. Although it is understandable that immigrants want to reunite with
their extended families, they made the choice to leave those families behind
when they immigrated to another country. Demanding family reunion from the host
country on humanitarian grounds makes the situation worse—and waiting for a
decade or more for that reunion is far from being humane.
To address these
issues, we should shift our immigration's emphasis from family reunion to
merit. I'm not proposing to get rid of family reunion altogether. I believe,
however, our immigration should be a merit-based system: an immigration system
that gives higher preference to people who have skills and experiences to
contribute, and to entrepreneurs who want to invest in America and create job
opportunities for Americans—in other words, a much more flexible merit-based
immigration program to meet our nation’s economic needs.
We do not have to
reinvent the wheel. Both Canada and Australia have established and successfully
operated merit-based immigration systems for years. We can learn from their
systems’ strengths and weaknesses. We're in 2017. We shouldn't continue to live
with an immigration system established in 1965.
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